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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
🦋 Spo-dee-o-dee
I was reminded this weekend of a song I love, and I bothered to do a little research and find out more about it. Here's the version I was listening to this weekend:
I always think of this as a Rockabilly tune; turns out the original version predates Rockabilly by a few years. It was written by Granville "Stick" McGhee when he was in the army in WWII (supposedly under the title "Drinkin Wine, Motherfucker" -- I hope hope hope this is not apocryphal*) and recorded on Decca in 1946 -- Granville's elder brother Brownie(!) played guitar.
They re-recorded it in 1949 on the Atlantic label and had a hit record:
I can't find the 1946 record on the internet anywhere - hoyhoy.com says Decca re-issued it after Atlantic's hit and "It flopped because it didn't rock."
The big hit, the reason I think of this as a Rockabilly number, was Jerry Lee Lewis:
So which do you like best? I hear things I love in each of them, I'm leaning towards thinking the Pirates version rocks the hardest... Any other favorite covers of this tune?
*Update: I found a reference for this story, and more information about Stick McGhee, in The Unsung Heroes of Rock n Roll, by Nick Tosches.
posted evening of Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 ➳ More posts about Cover Versions ➳ More posts about Music
In the current London Review of Books, Žižek examines the phenomenon of authoritarian capitalism and its ongoing spread across Asia, in the context of last month's events in Iran.
Dave Philipps of the Colorado Springs Gazette has written a horrifying examination of the crimes being committed by soldiers returned from Iraq, in two parts: The hell of war comes home, and Warning signs.
